Greenwich woman on mission to gain recognition for her father

Barbara Hertz holds a poster featuring her late father Dr. Saul Hertz at her home in Greenwich, Conn., Friday, June 30, 2017. Dr. Hertz discovered the use of radioactive iodine for the treatment of thyroidBarbara Hertz holds a poster featuring her late father Dr. Saul Hertz at her home in Greenwich, Conn., Friday, June 30, 2017. Dr. Hertz discovered the use of radioactive iodine for the treatment of thyroid disease.

A March 2013 cover story in Thyroid, the Journal of the American Thyroid Association, features a photo of Dr. Saul Hertz, right, who discovered the use of radioactive iodine for the treatment of thyroidA March 2013 cover story in Thyroid, the Journal of the American Thyroid Association, features a photo of Dr. Saul Hertz, right, who discovered the use of radioactive iodine for the treatment of thyroid disease.

Barbara Hertz holds a poster featuring former American track star Gail Devers at her home in Greenwich, Conn., Friday, June 30, 2017. The inscription on the poster thanks Barbara Hertz's father, the late Dr.Barbara Hertz holds a poster featuring former American track star Gail Devers at her home in Greenwich, Conn., Friday, June 30, 2017. The inscription on the poster thanks Barbara Hertz's father, the late Dr. Saul Hertz for his hard work in discovering the use of radioactive iodine for the treatment of thyroid disease. Devers suffered from Graves' disease and was treated with radioactive iodine.

It’s a trait she probably got from her father, Dr. Saul Hertz, who only stood 5-feet 4-inches tall but was a towering figure in other respects.

“From what I understood, this was a man of extraordinary intellect, courage, kindness and tenacity,” she said.

Hertz has no memories of her father, who died when she was a small girl. He left a long legacy as a pioneer in the field of cancer research and radioactive therapy, and the daughter has been connecting with his spirit for years — most recently on a trip to Poland, where his family originated. Hertz recently gave a presentation to a medical convention there and had the honor of seeing a new permanent display about her father at the University of Warsaw Medical School.

“Can you tell I’m on a mission?” asked Hertz, who was a special-education teacher in Greenwich public school district for 35 years.

The mission is a fairly simple one: to give her father the credit he was due as a medical visionary, one she felt he was deprived of in his lifetime.

Her father grew up in Cleveland, the son of two Polish Jews who lived near each other in the same part of central Poland and then met in Ohio. Their son faced and overcame a number of barriers in his medical career at a time when quotas against Jews in academia and the professions curtailed advancement. A gifted scholar, Dr. Hertz made it to Harvard Medical School before securing a post as a research associate at MIT and a position at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. There was only one other Jewish doctor affiliated with the hospital at the time, according to the Hertz family.

It was at Mass General in Boston in 1941 that the doctor administered the first therapeutic dose of a radioactive substance to successfully treat a thyroid condition. His work also pointed the way forward to cancer treatment through radiation.

Hertz served with the U.S. Navy in World War II as a doctor and researcher. He died young, at the age of 45, in 1950, from a heart attack.

Barbara Hertz, 70, felt her father’s contributions to medicine and cancer research were diminished by a combination of factors: his early death, the hurdles created by the anti-Semitism of the era and the unethical way in which another researcher took credit for some of Hertz’s experimental findings.

For years, Barbara Hertz has been spreading the word about her father’s achievements, including a convention of the Society for Nuclear Medicine in Spain last year. A Polish delegation was excited to hear about Hertz’s Polish ancestry, and the special-education teacher from Greenwich was on her way to the land of her ancestors this summer.

While the history of Jews in Poland has seen its share of sorrow and tribulations, Hertz said she was warmly embraced in Warsaw and the ancestral home of her grandfather and grandmother, Golub-Dobrzyń.

“So much food, unbelievable. The hospitality, the kindness,” she recalled. A local historian in the town did some research for Hertz on her family tree — “she told me about one of my great uncles, who was a rabbi.”

When Hertz gave a presentation about her father to a convention of Polish medical personnel, most of whom understood English, she wore her dad’s MIT ‘key of service’ that he earned there. It was a highlight of a lifetime to see reproductions of her father’s medical papers and portrait installed at the medical school in Warsaw — next to Marie Curie, a renowned Polish scientist who was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize.

The trip to Poland made her feel closer to her father, and she could almost sense his presence there, the retired teacher said.

“I got to know my father a little better,” she said, “to understand his challenges, the gifts he gave to the world. Good job, dad.”